Dad 'shared' child porn

An engineering consultant who gave a secretary a computer disc containing child porn pictures has escaped a jail term.

Ian Foot, of School Lane, Burghfield Common, put his head in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably in the dock at Reading Crown Court throughout his sentencing for downloading indecent images of children.

The 56-year-old was working for a consultancy firm in London when he struck up a conversation about porn with a woman secretary in August 2004, the court heard.

The pair agreed to exchange some of their collections and Foot gave her a disc saying, “I don’t know how you will feel about these, some of them are a bit young”, said prosecutor Richard Sharpe.

The secretary was a bit wary because of this so watched it with a colleague and they were horrified by the graphic child pornography on the disc.

Police were called and they raided Foot’s house and seized a hard drive and piles of computer discs which revealed more than 700 sick pictures of children. Forty-eight of the images fell into Level 4 and eight of the pictures were classed as Level 5 – the two most serious categories of indecent child porn.

Foot’s whimpers could be heard throughout the courtroom as the prosecutor listed the explicit details of some of the pictures.

Henry James, defending, said Foot had developed an unhealthy obsession with porn and started looking at pictures of children because he was curious.

Mr James said Foot, whose wife was in the public gallery, had lost his job because of the scandal and had showed deep remorse and shame for what he had done.

The defendant, who has two grown-up children, had earlier admitted seven counts of making indecent images of children, one count of distributing and one count of possessing those images.

Sentencing Foot on Friday, Judge Zoe Smith said he had committed a serious crime but was convinced he was best dealt with in the community. He was given a three-year community order which will force him to take part in the sex offenders’ group work programme.

He was also banned from downloading any pornographic material for five years, ordered to pay £1,074 towards prosecution costs, and made to sign the sex offenders’ register.